Healthwatch Stoke-On-Trent
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Healthwatch Stoke-on-Trent Annual Report 2014/15 Healthwatch Stoke-on-Trent 2 Contents Contents ................................................................................................. 3 Note from the Chair ................................................................................... 4 Note from Chief Officer .............................................................................. 5 About Healthwatch Stoke-on-Trent ................................................................ 6 Our Statement of Intent ............................................................................. 6 Engaging with people who use health and social care services .............................. 10 Understanding people’s experiences ............................................................. 10 Enter & View ......................................................................................... 14 Providing information and signposting for people who use health and social care services ................................................................................................. 16 Helping people get what they need from local health and social care services ........... 16 Influencing decision makers with evidence from local people .............................. 18 Producing reports and recommendations to effect change ................................... 18 Putting local people at the heart of improving services ...................................... 19 Working with others to improve local services ................................................. 22 Impact Stories ......................................................................................... 24 Case Study One ...................................................................................... 24 Case Study Two...................................................................................... 26 Our plans for 2015/16 ............................................................................... 29 Our strategic priorities ............................................................................. 29 Our governance and decision-making ............................................................. 30 Our Board ............................................................................................ 30 Financial information ................................................................................ 33 Contact us .............................................................................................. 34 Get in touch ......................................................................................... 34 Healthwatch Stoke-on-Trent 3 unprecedented level in the hospital during Note from the January. It is no comfort to know that we are not alone in under performing on A&E Chair targets, but perhaps in some perverse way, the scale of the problem focused minds more on collaborative working towards a solution. Once again Healthwatch has been a constant in these It is with a genuine meetings and the A&E Survey we sense of pride that I conducted jointly with Healthwatch write this intro- Staffordshire has informed the thinking on duction to our solutions. second Annual As chair I have been very pleased to see Report of Healthwatch Stoke-on- our involvement across the broadest range Trent. We have spent this year of activity from focused A&E surveys, GP consolidating our position and Access Surveys, Mental Health Access, relationships across the City. We Discharge Pathways, Parkinsons work, have also worked hard to grow our through to the engagement with Public membership and awareness with the Health running their Big Alcohol Debate public and other stakeholders. and very specific input to the series of Health Literacy workshops in the City. We have been extremely active in embedding ourselves as an independent I am also able to report that Healthwatch organisation able to fulfil the statutory has a presence and makes a significant functions we have been commissioned to contribution, at most strategic tables in deliver. Our health economy locally has the city now and I observe a level of faced some significant challenges during respect for the views expressed by the year. Identified as one of 11 Healthwatch Stoke-on-Trent because we Distressed Health Economies across are so well grounded in public opinion. England, the leaders of health and care As a member of the Health and Wellbeing services across Stoke and Staffordshire Board, we undertook to lead on the have had to step up to the table to development of a Dignity and Respect address the challenges presented. Charter for the citizen and we are very Healthwatch Stoke-on-Trent was invited pleased that this has been adopted by the to be a member of the group which led Board and will be launched in June. the KPMG review of the local health All in all a good year and I would like to economy. Our manager Val Lewis took the thank all those who have been involved in role of representing patient voice at these supporting Healthwatch Stoke in the past meetings and reminding decision makers year, in particular our Management Board, that any proposals needed to put the staff and volunteers alike together with patient at the heart of the solution. other stakeholders and I look forward to The national spotlight on A&E waiting growing the organisation with the local times has often been on Royal Stoke community at the heart of all decisions. Hospital over the winter with 12 hour Every Blessing Lloyd Cooke, Chair, trolley breaches reaching an Healthwatch Stoke-on-Trent Healthwatch Stoke-on-Trent 4 The two local Healthwatch – Staffordshire Note from Chief and Stoke-on-Trent worked together to support UHNM to engage in public dialogue Officer over the plans. This proved to be very successful for all parties and we have since collaborated on a number of pieces Writing an Annual of work and will, I think, begin to work Report can be more closely together whilst maintaining daunting and yet, our independence to speak and represent writing this, I the people of Stoke-on-Trent. realise how much Healthwatch Stoke on-Trent has not been we have grown and content with only raising its profile how much impact successfully. We have also attended a we have had. It is Health Select Committee to give evidence all down to a great team of staff and on the Transforming Cancer and End of a wonderful band of volunteers, from Life Programme in Stoke and our Board members to our Staffordshire. Additionally our young magnificent frontline volunteers. people were quoted in a parliamentary debate by local MP Rob Flello who shared It’s a report we can be proud of in Stoke- some of their messages around the CAMH’s on-Trent, both as staff and as volunteers (Children and Adolescent Mental Health and its also one we can use to show how services) to support improvements in much difference we make simply by being these services. there. So thank you to everyone who has been involved with us and, as a reader, I We have a very small team of staff who hope you will enjoy reading this and have to be multi-disciplinary and able to seeing how much has been done. adapt and adopt to meet patient and volunteer needs. They have done this The winter of 2014/15 will be superbly and their support and enthusiasm remembered locally as the time when our for their work has been very much University Hospital of North Midlands appreciated by me. Accident and Emergency performance was in the national headlines for many days in However, we would be nothing without succession for all the wrong reasons. the patients, service users, carers and voluntary and community organisations The decision to bring Royal Stoke and and groups who provide the voice of those County Hospital Stafford together in the who use services. We know that by University Of North Midlands NHS Trust working with them, recording their views (UHNM) led to some public concern. In and sharing their messages we are able to Staffordshire these were about proposals influence commissioners and clinicians to to move services up to Stoke-on-Trent and make services patient centred. in Stoke-on-Trent concerns were aired about the capacity of the Stoke site to Here’s to another busy but fruitful year manage the increased volume of patients. Val Lewis, Manager Healthwatch Stoke-on-Trent 5 About Healthwatch Stoke-on-Trent We are here to make health and Our Statement of Intent social care services better for ordinary people. We believe that the “Healthwatch Stoke-on-Trent will best way to do this is by designing enable a strong voice and provide local services around their needs support to local people and and experiences. We also believe community and voluntary groups so that the design of those services that they can influence the way their should put the patient and service health and social care services are user at the centre of the process. planned, purchased and provided.” Everything we say and do is informed by our connections to local people and our The Context expertise is grounded in their experience. We are the only body looking solely at Users and the public must be at the heart people’s experience across all health and of all health and social care service social care settings. delivery. To achieve this ambition, the Health and Social Care Act 2012 We are uniquely placed as a network, established a new consumer champion for with a local Healthwatch in every higher users of health and social care services, tier local authority area in England. called Healthwatch. Healthwatch exists As a